July 29, 2009

Can’t Be Right About Everything

While as others have noted DFW was in some ways quite prescient about how technology would change future society, he wasn’t right about everything. Take for example the sad tale of the meth-addicted headliner who keeps getting fired for writing heds like this:

BLOC QUEBECOIS TO CANADIAN P.M.: ACCEPT TOXICALLY CONVEX ADDITION TO OUR PROVINCE AND WE ARE OUT OF HERE SO FAST YOUR HEAD WILL SPIN ALL THE WAY AROUND

In the real Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment that guy would have a massive following on Twitter and would no doubt be heralded as a prophet of media to come.

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Speaking of DFW on technology, I’ve actually found that throughout his work, he speaks with something that comes off as authority and confidence on matters relating to computers in particular, but he’s just way off, and not in ways that I think necessarily advance the whole unreliable narrator thing. It’s been kind of a constant disappointment to me, though one of very few, and — geez — the guy gets so much right that I’ll let this one area slide.